Universe is 15% older than previously thought. The distance to a galaxy was measured by observing a binary star. The new measurement implies that the value used for the Hubble constant is off by 15%. More measurements need to be made to confirm and narrow the age estimate and to analyze the Hubble constant.

Millipede is a data storage device based upon an array of atomic force microscopes.

From wikipedia: The progress of millipede storage to a commercially useful product has been slower than expected. Huge advances in other competing storage systems, notably Flash and hard drives, has made the existing demonstrators unattractive for commercial production. Millipede appears to be in a race, attempting to mature quickly enough at a given technology level that it has not been surpassed by newer generations of the existing technologies by the time it is ready for production.

The earliest generation millipede devices used probes 10 nanometers in diameter and 70 nanometers in length, producing pits about 40 nm in diameter on fields 92 μm x 92 μm. Arranged in a 32 x 32 grid, the resulting 3 mm x 3 mm chip stores 500 Mbits of data, resulting in an areal density, the number of bits per square inch, on the order of 200 Gb/in². IBM initially demonstrated this device in 2003, planning to introduce it commercially in 2005. By that point hard drives were approaching 150 Gb/in², and have since surpassed it.

More recent devices demonstrated at CeBIT in 2005 have improved on the basic design, using a 64 x 64 cantilever chips with a 7 mm x 7 mm data sled, boosting the data storage capacity to 800 Gb/in² per square inch using smaller pits. It appears the pit size can scale to about 10 nm, providing an areal density just over 1Tb/in². IBM now plans to introduce devices based on this sort of density in 2007. For comparison, the very latest perpendicular recording hard drives feature areal densities on the order of 230 Gb/in², and appear to top out at about 1 Tb/in². Semiconductor-based memories offer much lower density, 10 Gb/in² for DRAM and about 250 Mb/in² for Flash RAM.

Recently others have found how to reduce friction by 100 times in MEMS devices like Millipede. That can help to improve the reliability and operating life for Millipede devices. If Millipede can be commercialized next year, the cost of AFM and other microscope arrays could come down. The cost reduction would boost the development of more massively parallel arrays of microscopes. That development would boost early molecular nanotechnology capabilities. This is getting more powerful with improvement s to the tips of the microscopes. They have tips that end with one atom, which increases the accuracy and resolution.

Within 20 years regenerative medicine will be the standard of care for replacing all tissue/organ systems in the body in addition to extensive industrial use for pharmaceutical testing. The ultimate goal at the end of 20 years is to have real time mass customization of tissues on demand, in vivo. During those 20 years, as our knowledge of tissues grows, it is reasonable to expect to see treatments discovered along the way, roughly at the 5, 10 and 20 year marks. In 5 years the following milestones are hoped for:

Ultimately, within 20 years the full benefits of regenerative medicine therapies will be reached. Some of the applications of regenerative medicine could be:

- Harness regenerative medicine materials to produce in situ regeneration of diseased and damaged structures in many areas of the body - Regenerate most damaged tissues and organs either in vivo or through implanted regeneration therapies - Produce in vitro sophisticated 3-D tissues and organs that cannot be regenerated through in vivo techniques, such as an entire heart or lung

IMFT is already working on some new technology. On June 29, it expanded its collaboration with Nanosys, a Palo Alto, Calif., nanotechnology startup that's designing microscopic nanowires that could be used to boost the capacities of NAND flash memory chips.

Until recently researchers have relied on the nanotubes which researchers purchase as a powder. The nanotubes are said to have remarkable, if not almost magical, properties. For example, by simply mixing the powder with polymers or chemicals, films and composites can be made.

However, the method has drawbacks. “We have never been able to anchor the powder to a large surface, nor can we grow the nanotubes in a large device. Typically we could only produce them in minute amounts, if we used the powder substance,” said Mitra. Now everything has changed.

Using a catalyst either prepared on the steel surface or enabled by a chemical deposition process, the NJIT inventors have created nanotubes which can stick to the walls of narrow or wide tubes. And, they can grow considerably larger amounts of them, making the process more attractive and viable for industrial usages.

August 02, 2006

Scanning tunneling microscope "topographic map" of a sample of cuprate semiconductor shows the locations of atoms in the crystal lattice. The inset shows how the current flow at a single point of the scan varies with voltage, with "kinks" (arrows) that indicate the presence of lattice vibrations and electron pairs.

Researchers found that the distribution of paired electrons in a common high-temperature superconductor was "disorderly," but that the distribution of phonons -- vibrating atoms in the crystal lattice -- was disorderly in just the same way. The theory of low-temperature superconductivity says that electrons interacting with phonons join into pairs that are able to travel through the conductor without being scattered by atoms. These results suggest that a similar mechanism may be at least partly responsible for high-temperature superconductivity.

They have shown that you can't ignore the electron-phonon interaction. They have not proved that it's involved in the pairing, but they have proven that you can't ignore it.

They advanced the use of scanning tunneling microscopes. Drawing on a technique developed at Cornell a decade ago to measure the vibrations of a single atom, Davis extended the measurements across an entire sample, using an improved scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The STM uses a probe so small that its tip is a single atom; positioned a few nanometers above the surface of a sample and moved in increments smaller than the diameter of an atom, it can scan a surface while current flowing between the tip and the surface is measured.

August 01, 2006

The competition in solar power is intense and major advances are being made. Getting an installed cost well below $1 per watt would be revolutionary and highly competitive. Mass produced concentrator based solar looks like it has many advantages and should be highly successful for one or two of the dozens of companies trying to make it work. Solar power looks like it will greatly increase its share of the energy portfolio for many nations.

SolFocus' design, for example, uses one-thousandth as much semiconductor material per watt produced as a conventional silicon photovoltaic cell. The technology uses compound photovoltaics such as germanium and gallium arsenide, originally designed for use in satellites, which can capture up to 40 percent of the solar energy hitting them -- more than double the efficiency of high-end silicon cells.

But the bulk of the materials reduction comes from the concentrator, which Conley says resembles the headlight in most modern cars. "Put the cell where the light bulb is and you have our design," says Conley. Mirrors are the key: a primary mirror that focuses sunlight onto a smaller mirror perched above, which, in turn, focuses the light on the solar cell.

A second-generation design squeezes the process into a single glass block: light beaming through the top of the block reflects off primary mirrors shaped into the bottom face, up to secondary mirrors shaped into the top face, and back to one-millimeter-square photovoltaic cells popped into the center of the primary mirrors.

The vaccine prompts the body to produce antibodies against ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and weight gain.

Vaccinated rats put on less weight while eating the same amount as those which did not have the jab.

A UK obesity expert said the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study was interesting, but it might not be safe for people.

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California developed three synthetic vaccines that recognise different parts of the ghrelin hormone.

When injected into rats, two of the vaccines were found to bind to the active form of ghrelin, inducing antibodies against the hormone and blocking its action.

This is an important proof of principle, but they need to have more control of the anti-bodies that are produced. Ghrelin is present in the brain, so there is a risk of an immune system response against the brain.

the Toffoli gate, invented by Tommaso Toffoli, is a universal reversible logic gate, which means that any reversible circuit can be constructed from Toffoli gates. It is also known as the "controlled-controlled-not" gate, which also describes its action.

The USA has 298 machines on the Top 500 supercomputer list.(Six of the top 10 supercomputers are U.S. machines.) Experts believe that the nation with the most machines near the top of the ranking generally has the most competitive economy.

Japan built a processor that did only the type of calculations they need to do in astrophysics. They built a specialized processor and a specialized network. It shows how cost- and power-efficient you can be if you build for a specific applications. Custom hardware can in general deliver 10-100 times the efficiency of generalized hardware with specialized software.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.7-million, 10-month contract to design a remotely controlled nano air vehicle (NAV) that is capable of collecting military intelligence both indoors and in urban outdoor environments.

The team includes Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Sandia National Laboratories, AeroCraft, ATK Thiokol and the University of Pennsylvania.

Plans call for a chemical rocket enclosed in the NAV's single wing to be able to deliver a sensor payload module more than 1000 yards from the point of release. Besides controlling lift and pitch, the wing will also house telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors, and battery power. The NAV will be about 1.5 inches long and have a maximum takeoff weight of about 0.35 ounces, Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, Md.) said in a press release.

Lockheed Martin said a remote pilot would be able to fly the NAV towards its target by viewing its flight path through a camera embedded in the wing with images transmitted wireless back to the operative. As the system is developed Lockheed Martin expects an autopilot to be included aboard the NAV to provide limited autonomous operations. Once the NAV delivers its payload, it will return to base for collection and refurbishment.

The $1.7 million contract is intended to fund design of prototypes for the engine, the airframe, the flight control system, and the communications system as well as computer models of the guidance system and sensors.

A preliminary design review is planned for summer 2007. After a sequence of go/no-go tests, DARPA may fund an additional 18-month period during which Lockheed Martin would design and test a flying prototype.

He lists the key characteristics needed to become rich:- Confidence and an unshakeable belief it can be done and that you are the one to do it.- Stamina is essential- Tunnel vision helps. - Being a bit of a shit helps. - A thick skin helps. - Be willing to fail- Be willing to work very hard to achieve it

There are about 90,000 people in the world who would qualify as the lesser rich or wealthier. About 11,000 people who would qualify as seriously rich or wealthier. About 793 are the billionaires who would be mostly the filthy rich and super rich.

an important hurdle to commercial success for the Contour system is whether it will be the first low-cost technology to cross what film and robot specialists refer to as the “uncanny valley.”

That phrase was coined in the 1970’s by Masahiro Mori, the Japanese robotics specialist, as he sought to describe the emotional response of humans to robots and other nonhuman entities. He theorized that as a robot became more lifelike, the emotional response of humans became increasingly positive and empathetic — until a certain point at which the robot took on a zombie-like quality, and the human response turned to repulsion. Then, as the robot becomes indistinguishable from a human, the response turns positive again. Critics were quick to point out the eerie look of the characters in “Polar Express.”